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Friday, January 4, 2013

Godslayer: Trolodyte Faction

Hi, welcome to the second review of one of the Megalith Games starter sets! This time we will take a look at the fierce Trolodyte faction of the fantasy skirmish game called Godslayer manufactured by Megalith Games. This epic game of good and evil is set in the rich and detailed fantasy universe named Calydorn, Godslayer is created to be a fast and tactically challenging tabletop skirmish game played with detailed metal miniatures. The skirmish game is designed for two or more players and offers a totally new gaming experience with many aspects never before seen. As a skirmish game Godslayer allows players to field a group of warriors in combat engagements. These so called warbands represent hunting parties, scouting forces, raiders or simply bands of adventurers, mercenaries, or bandits.

Background of the Trolodytes

Of all the elements, Shadow is regarded as the greatest and its children the mightiest, being as they are almost immune to the powers of the other four planes. Troglodytes are consequently ubiquitous, able to survive in all climates from the icy chill of the Northlands to the Ashlands of the southern wastes; and from the towering altitude of the Hurricane Nebula to the deepest trenches of the oceans. This fact makes them ideally suited to oppose every other elemental race - the calling they were born for.

The physical forms of the Troglodytes are varied, and their numerous cultures are each one unique. The brutal and disciplined armies of hulking Trolloth warriors conform to regimented, feudal societies, building vast fortresses and marching to war in thick armor of iron. The diminutive and irascible Gnolls swarm out of labyrinthine warrens excelling in cunning, sneaky tactics. Imperious and magical, the Shadow Trolls use their ethereal forms to move as fleeting shadows and penetrate all defenses. Savage and frenzied, the Feral Trolls are the final major grouping; primal beasts lurking in the wilderness who answer the call to arms when any of the other Troglodytes march to war. There exists no unified Troglodyte empire for they are spread across the entire world and have established numerous independent kingdoms. More can be found here

The box

The starterset arrived swift and extremely well-packed in a large cartonboard box preventing shipping damage even when thrown around during the shipping! When opening the large box, I stumbled upon the two starter sets and the ruleset (of which I will write another review later on) and was really surprised by the awesome quality of box art design and the miniatures depicted on the box.

When carefully opening the Troloyte starterset I found a neat fast-play rule pamflet, a pack of unit cards and the miniatures. All these bits and the miniatures were nicely packed between several layers of foam allowing you to use the box as a transport box for the warband when adding some extra foam and cut it to size.

The Trologdyte faction starter set contains 5 highly detailled miniatures and allows you to field a 160 point warband which is the normal size for small skirmish battles with one warlord. The miniatures itself came in individual ziplock bags as they exist out of multiple parts such as the bodies, arms, shields and other pieces for the character models. The miniatures is the starterset are the huge bonecrushing Feral Hammerfist, able of smashing skull and splinthering bone with powerful blows, the Duskborn Chieftain provides his minions with enough attack and tactical power while the three Ironhide Brutes form the bulk of this Trologdyte warband.

As said the starterset also includes nicely designed character cards for every unit or character allowing you to easily remember the specific rules and mark their suffered wounds. These cards contains all the information you need to play the units such as their movement, melee, defence skills and other important skills. The back of each unit card contains the special rules of the miniatures so you never need to browse the rulebook for specific terms or effects. The packet of cards also comes with some token sheets which are needed to track certain effects and your activation pool.

The assembly

The assembly of this miniatures was quite straight forward but never the less I will guide you through the assembly. As said the miniatures were casted well and did not need lots of cleaning before the assembly except for some adjustments with a small vile to ensure a tight connection for the glue. The miniatures came in individual ziplock bags so you didn't need to search for the right parts in a large pile which was nice.

First of all I decided to assemble the three Ironhide Brutes as they looked the easiest miniatures to assemble and also were the core troops so if something went wrong it wasn't my warlord that went bust! Everything went alright as the models were easy to assemble and only needed some attention with a small metal vile to make some parts fit. These miniatures came in sveral parts such as the body, arms, shields and the weapons.

Having practised a bit with the regular troopers it was now time to assemble the characters as the Feral Hammerfist and the Duskborn Chieftain. The Feral Hammerfist only consisted out of four heavy metal parts and with a bit of villing was needed, the head and the attached hammerfists fitted the body exactly leaving no visable gap! There were also some small details which were part of the armour, but those were easy to attach despite their small size. The Duskborn Chieftain was the most difficult model of the bunch consisting out of 8 parts of some which were rather heavy.

All of these miniatures were attached to their plastic bases using some regular green stuff which can be bought in good model shops or online. I choose for this option of I prefer this method when attaching metal slotta base miniatures to their plastic bases. To do so I have cut down the slotta on the miniatures some mm as they would otherwise be a bit bigger than the slotta gap in the plastic base. After that I make a small thin role of greenstuff and lay it in the base then pushing the miniature's base slotta in the gap and filling the holes up with more greens stuff. When dry, the green stuff is rock solid and the miniatures are firmly hold in place.

Please note that none of the shields were yet attached as it would otherwise be to difficult to paint the miniatures.

Scale comparison

I have also made a picture to show the sheer size of these models, not wondering why this starter set only contains five miniatures instead of eight as the Nordgaard starter set. All of these miniatures tower above the small dwarves especially the fierce Feral Hammerfist! Interested in the Nordgaard review? Here's the link.

The conclusion

To conclude this Trologdyte faction starterset, I can only say great quality and suited for their individual role as skirmish miniatures! The miniatures are huge and are easy to assembly with some glue and greenstuff (I haven't used pinning but I guess they will survive the many tabletop adventures that they will see). The boxed set includes everything you need to play with the exception of dices and a ruler so two starter sets allow you to immediatly play the game so no need to immediatly buy the rulebook allowing you to graduatly increase the number of special rules and battle tactics. This starterset now retails at €39.95 and is available directly from Megalith Games.Or you can buy them from Wayland Games.